2024-12-03

Romance Writers Weekly ~ Diversity ~ #LoveChatWrite

This week, on the Romance Writers Weekly blog hop, we're asked to think about the, "Many cultural and religious holidays are celebrated in December," and to "Discuss the importance and impact of diverse characters and relationships in your stories."

The story I'm featuring this week has nothing whatsoever to do with this topic. So, I guess I'll just talk about the subject in general, rather than trying to tie it back to the book. I love exploring different types of characters and different relationships in my books. It's an unfortunate tendency, in some ways, since it's hard to build an audience when your readers never know what they're going to get from one book to another. But I'm also writing for myself, and I want my fictional worlds to feel real--which means the people who live there are diverse, their relationships are diverse, their lived experiences are different from mine--and from each other.

It's hard at times, because you don't want to be stepping on anyone's toes, and you don't always know what you don't know! But I think it's important to try, all the same, to normalize the idea that people aren't all the same--and that there's no reason why they should be!

To quote Maya Angelou: “diversity makes for a rich tapestry, and we must understand that all the threads of the tapestry are equal in value no matter what their color.”

Now, hop on over to Jenna Da Sie's page to find out what she thinks!